Q: Home Sharing drop out with Apple TV2

I was once one of the frustrated Apple tv users. I battled the black box and its connection dropping demons for a years. All of my problems went away as soon as bought the: Netgear N900 WNDR4500 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router

It cost me $180.00 to fix the issue I was having on my $99 apple tv.

I did nothing special to the router. I set it up using the Setup Wizard. Left both networks running. Didn't change one setting. I have not had a connection drop in 2 months. It is amazing.

I would like to add that the wifi coverage from my router is solid standing outside 2 houses down. This router is worth every penny just for the strong wifi signal. Apple tv works well. Solid coverage in both bathrooms and garage (a must have).

If buying a $180 router isn't in the budget the Roku 2 is an awesome choice. Plex is awesome and streaming to multiple platforms is useful.

I had the same problem.  I have Windows 7, 64 bit.  I did not completely uninsatll iTunes and Bonjour.  I went to "Add/Remove Programs" and located Bonjour.  I selected "repair", rather than "uninstall".  This worked for me.

Also verify that iTunes is allowed through your firewall "incoming connections".

I gave up and took my appletv back to the apple store where I bought it in December. They exchanged it. Problem solved!

I figured I would comment on my setup...

Router 1/port 1 ethernet to Windows 7 computer
Router 1/port 2 ethernet to Router 2
Router 1/port 3 ethernet to ATV3
Router 2/port 1 ethernet to ATV2
iMac wireless

Home Sharing is enabled in iTunes on both the iMac and Windows computers (each has its own library). The iMac, ATV2 and ATV3 IP addresses are currently static. The Windows computer IP address is dynamic. Software/firmware on all computers, ATVs and routers are updated to the latest versions. Both routers are 4 port wireless routers. Router 2 is set up as an access point.

Without geting into the settings of the components I will say I have tried different IP addresses (static/dynamic), various clock settings on the computers and ATVs, forwarding ports and opening ports in my firewall and many other suggestions mentioned here. Nothing worked. Home Sharing for both computer is dropping out from both ATVs.

I sent Apple feedback on this multiple times and called support once and they offered a solution that didnt work, but I just dont have the time to trouble shoot this for them.

Some people are reporting success turning off home sharing and then turning it back on in iTunes and ATV

harv55 wrote:

 

Some people are reporting success turning off home sharing and then turning it back on in iTunes and ATV

That only works for a day if that.  But disabling / enabling Home Sharing or just closing / re-opening iTunes does allow things to work for a  few hours.

Did you try repairing Bonjour?  If the "repair" option is unavailable, try completely reinstalling Bonjour.

Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Locate Bonjour and repair.

Has anyone else who was having the occasional dropouts had them stop recently? I can confirm that I have not had one dropout in over a week, where it was dropping out at least once or twice a day. I changed nothing with my setup. Just started working. Anyone else or am I just lucky?

Happened to me months ago. After a long period of dropouts, one day it just started working and has been glitch free ever since. Not unusual for Apple products.

I have this issue with OS 5 for my ATV 2.

With 4.4.4 I had no problems, but ever since the update homeshare barely works, I've just about given up trying to use it even.

I've tried everything to fix this but no luck.

JB to XBMC for me I guess.

SpidermonkeyCVO & robertparker,

My homesharing has not dropped in a few days, for either of my iTunes libraries.

My problem of Home Sharing that stops working after a few hours of inactivity still occurs. I talked to Apple Support today and they moved the info to the developers and I'm going to stay optimistic that they can figure it out.

Everything in my house is Apple.

This issue happens to me all the time now on my 2 ATVs. Never used to happen before.

The only way I can stop it from happening is to set my ATV to never sleep.

Mine started working just fine after I turned off IPV6, but today, the problem started again after a few weeks with no problems.

really bad... bad bad...Now Im furious,

It seems like it really drops out after 20 min when I am downloading something in another program..

I experienced the same problem. Home sharing would seemingly switch itself off after just a few minutes and a re-start of itunes would resolve the problem - but only for another few minutes. For me, the issue was created by adding a Slingbox to my network. Removing the Slingbox has resolved the issue. I am not sure if everyone here is running a Slingbox (seems terribly unlikely), but consider removing devices from your network and see if that helps. What I can be sure of, is that for me, the issue was not caused by either my router, switch, the Apple TV or iTunes. Everything worked fine before I added the Slingbox and works fine again now I've removed it.

The Slingbox had port forwarding set up on port 5001 on my router. This was removed, but still made no difference. Only removing the device itself worked.

Peter